Five-minute oscillations of solar equivalent widths

✍ Scribed by Hartmut Holweger; Larry Testerman

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1975
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 776 KB
• Volume: 43
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0038-0938
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00152351

✦ Synopsis

Equivalent widths of weak and moderately strong Fraunhofer lines observed in an area roughly 3500 • 10000 km in extent are found to show small variations of the order of 1 mA, on a time scale of minutes. The dependence of amplitude on line strength and excitation closely fits that predicted for a compressional disturbance associated with temperature variations that manifest themselves in the equivalent widths. The rms amplitude is about 20K near r~000= 10 -2.

These equivalent width variations frequently exhibit a 5-rain periodicity and are accompanied by prominent oscillations of velocity. Power spectra of both quantities closely resemble each other and demonstrate that most of the equivalent width variations in the range 200 to 500 s are due to the thermal response of the atmosphere to 5-rain oscillations.

A systematic phase lag between velocity and equivalent width is observed, in the sense that temperature leads velocity by an average angle of 120 ~ . This deviates significantly from 90 ~ valid for standing adiabatic waves, showing that in the line-forming layers, Ts000~ 10 -2, the 5-min oscillations are markedly affected by radiative exchange.

The observed phase lag implies a radiative decay time of ~40 s, a value which agrees with modelatmosphere predictions for the line-forming layers. Since the observed wave trains frequently show constant amplitude over a much longer time, a continuous feed-back of energy seems to occur.